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Mumbai Gravedigger Works 24-hour Shifts As COVID-19 Death Toll Soars

An assistant of Sayyed Munir Kamruddin, a gravedigger, prepares a grave for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) burials at a graveyard in Mumbai on April 28, 2021. — Reuters

Francis Mascarenhas

MUMBAI — Two or three months into the COVID-19 crisis, Mumbai gravedigger Sayyed Munir Kamruddin stopped wearing personal protective equipment and gloves.

“I’m not scared of COVID, I’ve worked with courage. It’s all about courage, not about fear,” said the 52-year-old, who has been digging graves in the city for 25 years.

India is in the midst of a second wave of coronavirus infections that has seen at least 300,000 people test positive each day for the past week, and its total cases rise past 18 million.

Health systems and crematoriums have been overwhelmed. In Delhi, ambulances have been taking the bodies of COVID-19 victims to makeshift crematoriums in parks and parking lots, where bodies are burned on rows and rows of funeral pyres.

Kamruddin says he and his colleagues are working around the clock to bury COVID-19 victims.

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